Medieval jousters Luke Binks (L) and Andrew McKinnon pose for a photograph in Sydney, Australia, August 16, 2017 during a photo call for the World Jousting Championships to take place in Sydney on September 23 and 24. (Photo by Dan Himbrechts/Reuters/AAP)

Traffic enforcer Ramiro Hinojas, 51, wears a Santa Claus costume while directing motorists through traffic at an intersection in Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines on November 28, 2017. (Photo by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

An Israeli spectator watches a giant T-Rex balloon during the Purim parade festival in Petah Tikva, Israel, Thursday, March 24, 2016. The Jewish holiday of Purim commemorates the Jews' salvation from genocide in ancient Persia, as recounted in the Book of Esther. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

In the spring of 1965, within weeks of 3,500 American Marines arriving in Vietnam, a 39-year-old Briton named Larry Burrows began work on a feature for LIFE magazine, chronicling the day-to-day experience of U.S. troops on the ground – and in the air – in the midst of the rapidly widening war. The photographs in this gallery focus on a calamitous March 31, 1965, helicopter mission; Burrows’ “report from Da Nang”, featuring his pictures and his personal account of the harrowing operation, was published two weeks later as a now-famous cover story in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE.

Photo: Man your battle stations: The crew chief of helicopter Yankee Papa 13, lance corporal James C. Farley, mans an M-60 machine gun during a mission near Da Nang, Vietnam on March 31, 1965. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures)

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Police Officer Keith Flood trains with his K-9 partner Doc, a German Shepherd, inside the “warehouse room” at the new MTA Police Department Canine Training Center in Stormville, New York, U.S., June 6, 2016. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

A wax figure of U.S. actress Scarlett Johansson stands outside Madame Tussauds New York attraction shortly after the figure was unveiled in Times Square in New York, July 30, 2015. (Photo by Mike Segar/Reuters)

A woman smokes marijuana during the annual 4/20 marijuana rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 20, 2017. (Photo by Chris Wattie/Reuters)

A performer wearing costumes walk on stilts before a show during a lantern fair at the beginning of Chinese Lunar New Year, in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, February 11, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)